Empires of Flesh
by Crystaline-Crimson
Summary: .alternate universe. ; .Austria/Hungary. ; A tale of how an Empire rose and fell, of how two people fell in love, and of how Roderich Edelstein was utterly unprofessional.


Empires of Flesh

Warnings: Artistic nudity and mentions of porn and things like that. Well, actually, the majority of it sort of centers around that. Suicide. _Somewhat _graphic description of the female body. Basically, not for the faint of heart. But there's no rape or graphic death or anything like that. So, really, unless you're scared of the human body or of love, have no fear. –shrug-

He prays the flash of the camera does not blind her, does not cause her any discomfort.

No, he has not prayed in years. _God_ has told him that the pleasures of the flesh are a sin. But the flesh itself is beautiful. The human body is indeed a temple. And at his work, he worships these temples by kneeling at their feet, capturing that beauty in still.

It never looks the same – an image never truly captures or recreates the textures of curves and hollows. They could never capture the echo of a laugh or the flush of a cheek of the flutter of an eyelash. The subtleties of the female body are simply too perfect to capture on camera, yet this woman, she is breath-taking even when she is made of pixels upon a screen.

She is higher than human – Roderich does not, _could_ not, know how to begin to worship her. He kneels and he rises. He lets there be light and he gives her shadows. He offers suggestions, but he never orders her and he never criticises. Her individuality _has_ to shine through, because she is simply unlike any other that he has ever seen. She is more than human. More than ethereal. More than physical and more than spiritual – she is like the Earth itself, a watch with no visible watchmaker. She has no Designer. Nothing – no one – could have designed something so beautiful. He has never been so captivated.

She arches and coos and when she laughs it echoes and vibrates in his bones. He can still feel her laugh minutes later, against his rib-cage, fluttering and thudding and _oh god, no_, that was just his heartbeat.

She smiles with her eyes and her hands and her contours and hollows. Her head moves back and the expansive of flawless skin is too vast, too much, the trickles of Earthen hair curl over her shoulders, cover just one perfect breast, the other so exposed and he knows it isn't professional to _stare_ but he has not been to Church in so long and it has been so long since he has felt the presence of Angels.

No ribs show or poke; it is merely one long, rounding curve and her waist is so small, her hips so feminine. She is so real, so alive, so tactile.

_The teasings of hair at her crotch_ – he had started to auto-pilot long ago; he does not know what pictures he has taken – _the spreading of her thighs_ – this is more than unprofessional, it is undignified, it is degrading, he can not do this - _the elegance right down to her toes_ – he is uncomfortably warm, beginning to sweat, he has always dressed smartly and now it is too warm and he hopes that she can not see what she is doing to him – _the chimes and bells in her laugh_ – of _course_ she knows what she is doing to him, how could she not know, she is so omniscient, so omnipotent, she is more than an Angel, she is God herself – _are you alright?_

He blinks. Blushes. Can not face her gaze.

"Don't take this the wrong way," she laughs and he knows that her words are genuinely not intended to offend – she does not show anything other than mirth at her mistakes, "but I sorta thought you'd rather be photographing _men_."

It isn't exactly an uncommon mistake. He is polite and chivalrous and he listens to problems and he will offer comfort for imperfections. He does not stare and he does not leer and he does not look down your top while you speak. He is professional and he knows the difference between artistic and erotic nudity, and how the lines between are often so blurred. He knows and he understands the female body and yet he looks only objectively and he will not let himself indulge in looking and he never, ever touches – not for more than to pose them like dolls.

"Surprising, isn't it?" His voice is almost hoarse. Hard to speak. It is hard to look at her when there is such flawlessness, such perfection in every smile and angle and breast. "But evidentially that's not the case." She laughs.

There is no use pretending. She has seen and he knows that it is _normal_ - he knows it _must_ to be normal to be aroused by this transcendent creature in front of him, naked with breathy, laughing mouth, lips parted and so full and perfect. He's never wanted to kiss a model before, not really, not with this burning _need_.

"You want some help with that?"

_No. Don't do this. Don't, please, don't do this._

_Don't be imperfect._

It is so selfish, such a selfish thing to think. But he can not let Venus touch him, not here, not now. She can not ruin this haze, this dream. She is perfect – she is just so different from the filth he must so often immortalise in film. She must not be like the rest. It happens just too often that his models believe that more than clothes need to be taken from them before their shoot will be good enough.

"That just wouldn't be professional. My apologies."

"I really could have sworn you were gay."

She is on her feet again, arching once again, stretching.

Every line of her body is smooth and sleek and purposeful and powerful.

"Most people would have agreed with you. But I've tried it before and I simply can't appreciate the male body enough to enjoy it."

She laughs. He almost moans.

"You sure you don't want a hand with that?" She has turned back to him again, her grin youthful and full of life and happiness. He could not take that away from her, never. She is surely not _too_ young but for all of Roderich's insistent defence of the misunderstood beauty of artistic nudity... For all of that, he can not help but think that she is far too young and innocent to be baring herself for strange, unknown men.

"It would not be professional." He speaks clearly, slowly. It is not that he finds any difficulty in the language. It is his first tongue, no matter the slang difference he has had to accommodate for, and the harsher tones that the Germans put upon their words. He does not find any difficulty to live in this country (so similar but never quite like home) and he finds no qualms with the money he is given in return for working here. But still, he speaks clearly and slowly – with what many have said is an air of self-importance. He does not see any self-importance in his words. And at this moment, he cannot even see his words. He can only see the brunette Venus in front of him.

"What's your name, anyway?"

He blinks and flushes.

He does not want to become so personal, so close to this woman.

He rarely lies to himself, but this is one of the few times that he does. He tells himself that he can not, that he _must_ not move closer to her. It is a lie because he knows that if he does not move his hand across the contours and the hollows of her body then it is possible that he might die as he would die without air.

"Roderich. Roderich Edelstein. I'm from Austria. And no, that's not the same as Australia." He knows she is neither German nor Austrian – she does not speak the language with the fluency that he is accustomed to and her foreign pronunciations are nothing less than entrancing – and so he has no reason to believe that she has ever heard of his country. He speaks as he has spoken these words so many times before. "I believe it is too cold there for kangaroos and wallabies." She laughs and her smile rips out his heart in an instant.

"I know where Austria is, silly. I guess I'm your next-door neighbour, then. Hungarian. I'm Elizaveta." He knows her name. It is on her papers. But he has never heard it in sound and he wants to whisper those syllables until he dies. His erection remains. He feels sordid for it. He believes he will want to touch her until he dies. She persists. "Let me help you."

"It is not professional." He has said these words so many times now and yet he has never been so unsure of what he is saying.

"Then let me help you another time, Mr. Austria. If we're not at work then it isn't unprofessional." She grins and she walks towards him and he understands that she wants him and he simply cannot understand it. He is so aroused. She is so perfect. He wants to touch her, to taste her and feel the contours and hollows of her body. He wants to inhale the scent of her body after it is flushed with sweat and he wants to watch her as she comes and he wants to kiss her hand after they are spent and tell her that he loves her. He cannot understand this. She is just one woman. She is not transcendent. It is not possible – she is nothing more than one human woman. She is merely flawless.

"I do not use women for sex, Miss Elizaveta." He begins to wish that he did – anything to stop that self-doubting look of hurt across her face. He can feel her faltered smile tugging on his heart, stretching to the point of rips and tears. "What I mean to say is that I do not put out on a first date."

He is surprised at his own boldness. It has been a long time since he has given serious consideration to the idea of dating. For too long has he considered little other than nights with fingers across ivory keys and across his own skin.

"I'm sure we can reach a compromise." She smiles again and Roderich knows for certain that he is in love with this woman. That he will dream of Miss Elizaveta every night for the rest of his life. That one day he will buy her a ring.

---

When he returns home, the Sun has long since vanished from sight. He returns alone but he has never felt more complete. An hour away across this country, a Hungarian woman is asleep, wrapped up in blankets and dreaming of a photographer and musician, of a man with a mole below his mouth and morals stronger than his physical strength. For the first time in years, Roderich does not run his fingers across ivory keys before he sleeps. He laughs quietly to himself and knows he is in love and feels so very _perfect_. He undresses and he lays his head down upon his pillow and after the eighty-ninth time of replaying her laugh in her head, he falls asleep.

He dreams of marriages and unions. He dreams of a cravat around his neck and walking boots upon her feet. He dreams of a wedding ring upon her finger and he dreams of music and dancing and most curiously of all he dreams of empires.

---

In years to come, he will dream of wars and death. Perhaps in these dreams he may occasionally end up the victor. In years to come, he will be in love with his wife and he will hate himself. He will be told that his wife will never fall pregnant - not from him. He will cry and she will comfort him. From then on, the wars and battlefields that he dreams about will never end in victory. He will still love his wife and this will never change.

He will be alone when he dies. It will be quick and deliberate. He cannot live without her. Before he dies, he will smash his piano – the one he had before he was old enough to desire the touch of a woman – until all that will remain are ivory keys upon the ground. He will not touch them.

Before he dies, he will dream of one last battlefield.

---

It is in Vittorio Veneto – an Italian city that Roderich has never been to, never heard of. He holds his wife against the ground and she sobs into him and he knows that this is the last time that she will be in love with him – her desire for him is leaking through her eyes. He sees unfamiliar men around them. There are two identical brunettes with smiles that are detached and lost. He pities only one of them – the one that still carries a tiny white flag. Roderich pities him despite the boot mark that the boy has printed upon Roderich's neck. There is another man who grins and his glasses flash against the Italian sun even though it is November now. This man speaks of good and evil and how the war is nearly over. Roderich does not understand. The war is already over. Everything has ended.

There are two other men, dirty blonde and bickering. They are as unfamiliar to him as any other. He does not know them. He does not want to know them. He does not want anything other than for his wife to stop sobbing.

There are dead men around them. They are divided. One side holds thousands of corpses – he cannot count them. Tens of thousands of men sit there, groaning and crying and they are not dead but they wish that they were. They have seen too much. Roderich does not pity them. He does not care for them. He understands that their blood is on his hands. He wishes that he had killed more.

But he sits among more corpses. Many, many more. There are thirty five thousand of them. He _knows_. And there are one hundred thousand more men who sit and cry and groan and wish they were dead. He can feel every injury, every wound. And there are three hundred thousand men inside his head who moan for families that they do not know if they will see again.

He does not understand this dream. He does not understand any of his dreams.

---

The day that he decides to die is their anniversary. It is the second one that he has spent without her. He holds a note clutched in his hand and tries to hold onto it as air leaves him and the rope tightens around his neck. It falls from his grip but he does not know this. It speaks of a new life without him. Speaks of children that she wants to embrace. Speaks of pictures of herself that she wants to burn. Speak of how she loved him, loved him so much, and how she now does not love him at all.

He has always loved her. He still loves her as he kicks the chair away from his feet.

He prays that she will not be asked to identify his body – prays that the job is left to someone else. He prays that his death will cause her no discomfort.

No, he has not prayed in years.

AN.

The religious subtext in this is killing me. Should I take this moment to tell you that I've never read the Bible or gone to Church? But the Germanic lot seem a very religious bunch to me. –shrug-

This is basically an AU depiction of the join and fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. If you don't want to read the history behind this fic (a lot of which is probably wrong lol), then you can just skip straight to the part where you review and tell me what you thought of the thing. C:

A duel monarchy is created in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867). They have separate regions and governments but there is a common ruler and military.

Italy originally is allied with Germany and that lot, as we know, though_ technically_ it was neutral. In 1915, it switched to the side of the allies, mostly hoping to gain territory from Austria-Hungary after its defeat. In my world, this connects to the fact that this is just under a decade before Mussolini gets on the scene, and basically equates to 'Italy is going a little bit loco'. He's just too sweet for fascist dictatorship. –sad-

Anyway, by 1916, Russia was beating the shit out of the married couple and the opinion in Germany was that they had really useless allies. The Austro-Hungarian empire was made of ethnicities and races and languages and customs and the morale between the troops was not at an all-time high. Serbia was kicking the two while they were down and eventually the battle of Vittorio Veneto was pretty much the last battle where they were able to even make a dent in the war. The numbers and corpses and stuff in this part refer to the real numbers of deaths, causalities and PoWs. Italy lost 5,800 with 26,000 wounded.

The reason that Austria-Hungary were able to hold it together was because the Hungary part could continue to provide sufficient military supply to keep going on in the war. But as it became pretty clear to them that the Allies would win the war, nationalist movements in Hungary called for the split of the empire, which I believe happened in 1918. There's no bloody clear information on the internet about the division of Austria-Hungary and the end of its empire.

Anyway. Austria did very well after they split, but I will reject that reality and substitute it for Axis Powers Hetalia. It got me through my history exams.

If you've read this far, the least you can do is review. Go on. Do it. I love you.


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